For certain types of products, including but not limited to bottled or packaged products having a cap the top, it may be desirable and more convenient to display the products for sale by suspending them from their caps, flanges or other elements at the top of the package. A variety of display devices are available for this purpose. Examples of these are the Kinseley U.S. Pat. No. 4,863,131, Gollob et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,785,189, Spammer et al U.S. Pat. No. 5,865,326, and Hartwall U.S. Pat. No. 6,394,288. A shortcoming of these devices is that they all require front loading, meaning that new products must always be loaded from the front of the device. When displaying food products, or other products having a limited shelf life, it is very important that the display hooks be loaded properly, with new items always being placed at the back of the display, and older items be being moved to the front of the display, where they will be removed first by the customers. In order to assure that the merchandise on a front-loading display device is as fresh as practicable, one must either allow the display hook to be fully depleted before reloading, or remove any unsold products, load new products onto the back of the display, and then replace the unsold products at the front of the hook. This sometimes may not done properly, because of the extra time and effort required of the store employee.
The shortcomings of the front-loading arrangements described in the foregoing paragraph are partly resolved in display mechanisms represented by the Spamer et al U.S. Pat. No. 5,586,687 , and Trulaske No. 6,523,719. These devices allow back loading of the display. However, the loading must be in the direction of the axis of the display, which requires that open space be provided behind the display to allow a product to be positioned behind the display for loading. Moreover, these back-loading displays require special support structure in order to provide for the necessary space behind the display device.
Another form of display that permits loading of product at the rear of the display is that shown in the Merl U.S. Pat. No. 4,310,097. In that device, product bottles, which are supported by their necks, are loaded downwardly into the back of the display through a large open space at the back of the display. While this makes it possible for products to be back-loaded into the display, the Merl display device makes the process somewhat cumbersome, in that products are loaded from above the display. This requires the entire bottle to be gripped by its neck or top, lowered into the display and then moved forward until the neck of the bottle is engaged by spaced apart supports. A “catch basin” is provided to enable bottles, dropped during loading, to be retrieved.